One explanation of the growth of peat under both of these two very different geographical conditions is probably the absence of earthworms. The work of the earthworm is to drag down and destroy decaying vegetable matter and to cast the mineral soil on to the surface, but earthworms cannot live in water or in waterlogged land, and where there are no earthworms the decaying vegetation accumulates in layer after layer upon the surface, modified only by newer growths. Some years ago a great flood kept the land along the Bin Brook under water for several days and the earthworms were all killed, covering the paddock in front of St John's New Buildings in such numbers that when they began to decompose it was quite disagreeable to walk that way. It reminded me of the effects of storm on the cocklebeds at the mouth of the Medway, where the shells were washed out of the mud, the animals died on the shore and the empty shells were in time washed round the coast of Sheppey to the sheltered corner at Shellness. Here they lie some ten feet deep and are dug to furnish the material for London pathways. In those cases when the storm had passed the earthworms and the cockles came again, but the Hill Peat is always full of water retained by the spongy Sphagnum and similar plants, and the Fens are or were continually, and in some places continuously, submerged and no earthworms could live under such conditions. The blackness of peat and of bog-oak may be largely but certainly not wholly due to carbonaceous matter. Iron must play an important part. There is in the Sedgwick Museum part of the trunk of a Sussex oak which had grown over some iron railings and extended some eight inches or more beyond the outside of the part which was originally driven in to hold the rails. Mr Kett came upon the buried iron when sawing up the tree in his works and kindly gave it to me. From the iron a deep black stain has travelled with the sap along the grain, as if the iron of the rail and the tannin of the oak had combined to produce an ink. The well-known occurrence of bog-iron in peat strengthens this suggestion. An opportunity of observing this enveloping growth of wood round iron railings is offered in front of No. 1, Benet Place, Lensfield Road. The trees in the Fens often lie at a small depth and when exposed to surface changes perish by splitting along the medullary rays. It is not clear how long it takes to impart a peaty stain to bone, but we do find a difference between those which are undoubtedly very old and others which we have reason to believe may be more recent. Compare the almost black bones of the beaver, for instance, with the light brown bones of the otter in the two mounted skeletons in the Sedgwick Museum. MARL. "Marl," as commonly used, is Clay or Carbonate of Lime of a clayey texture or any mixture of these.